


Captain America's Greatest Fan

by DaisyNinjaGirl



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Historical Gay Rights, Multi, Original Character Love, Real Life Problems In A Super Powered World, Sad Ending, Vietnam War, back story, head canon, the 1980s
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 15:06:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3814918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/pseuds/DaisyNinjaGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter 1: In which we meet Phil, Phil meets the love of his life, and Captain America wants to recruit you!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captain America's Greatest Fan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/gifts).



> General disclaimer – this story is set in the early 1980s, when the public discourse about race and homosexuality was different from how it is now. Some terms and ideas that are no longer considered acceptable will appear in the story with clarifications in the notes.  
> Other general disclaimer – there are original characters who have significant roles in this story. Canon elements that aren’t Phil Coulson or Captain America fandom start to turn up in chapter two.  
> The Mature rating is for some dark themes, especially in later chapters, rather than sexual content.

When Phil was 18, his mother sat him down at the kitchen table and explained that he had the grades to go to a good college, and they would make the money work out.  But he said no, he wanted to join the Army like his father.  He wanted to serve.

“Following Captain America?”

“He was a good man.”

“When you’ve worked off all that energy,” she said, “we’ll talk about this again.”

***

Basic wasn’t easy, but it was survivable.  He could feel himself falling into the disciplines of the Army.  Coulson didn’t exactly enjoy the close control and the lack of privacy, the obsession with finicky details done precisely correct the first time and each time thereafter, but he recognised what it was for – breaking down each recruit’s ego and building them up again into a new structure, a group that could hold in combat.  That could keep its head together, when all around others were losing theirs; that in the unforgiving minute would trust not just itself, but each member.  He tried explaining this to one of his fellow recruits who was smarting from the lack of privacy and autonomy (“Worse than prison”) when their drill sergeant walked into the barracks.  They both hurriedly stood to attention.

“You aiming for OCS, Coulson?”

“No, sergeant.  Infantry School.”

“Why?”

“My father started out as an enlisted man.  I want to respect his memory.”

He was set to doing push-ups, a lot of them.  “I got no time for grunts who think too much,” the sergeant growled, before finding someone else to bawl out.  “They get themselves _and_ their squad mates killed.”  Coulson didn’t mind – the sheer physical demand of Basic was the part he relished.  It tired him out enough to sleep properly, as high school sports and helping on his mother’s farm had not.

At the end of recovery week he and his fellow recruits were rewarded with an evening liberty.  They hit the city in Georgia nearest their camp with a hiss and a roar that slowly fizzled out as new minted soldiers split off in smaller groups to bars and night clubs.  Phil was left by himself to wander, easing out of the mindset of constant observation, enjoying the sense of anonymity you only got when lost in a crowd.

He was walking through the college part of town when the thirst for a beer got too pressing.  There was a young woman sitting at the bar next to him reading a book, and he offered to treat her a drink.  “I’m actually waiting for someone,” she said, politely but without interest.

He looked at the girl, no, _woman_ , slight built with the lean femininity of a dancer.  She was fair in several senses of the word – beautiful, not pretty; with pale skin that looked like it would chap at a hard look, and long smooth platinum blonde hair in a thick braid down her back.  Her cotton shirt was light enough to show that she neither needed a bra, nor wore one.  And her southern Virginia accent was enough different from the local Georgians to make him realise how homesick he was.  “Can I buy you a drink anyway?”

She raised pale eyebrows over bird-bright brown eyes.

Phil raised big hands.  “Hey, I don’t mean anything by it unless you want me to.  I just got out of basic training – five minutes conversation with someone who has hair and doesn’t smell of farts is worth the price of a drink.”

“Here’s an idea,” a short man with reddish brown hair and beard approached, not much taller than the woman.  “If l’esprit d’escalier is a clever thought while you’re walking away down the stairs, is the spirit of the elevator that really witty thing you work out when you’re listening to _The Girl From Ipanema_?”

She turned.  “Good news, Mark, Private –” she paused to peer at Phil’s nametag – “P. J. Coulson has offered to buy us a drink.”

Phil smiled ruefully and pulled out his billfold.  “What would you like?”

“Brandy,” she said cheerfully. 

“I’m Phil,” he added.  “And you?” to the other guy, the one she’d called Mark.

“Oh, why not.”

Phil held up three fingers to the bartender.  Fuck it, he’d just finished BT, it was worth celebrating properly.

“You like Captain America,” Mark said, reaching across Phil’s arm to tick his thumbnail against the embossed star on Phil’s wallet.

“I do,” Phil replied.  “It’s a thing I used to do with my Dad.  I’ve been going to Cap conventions since I was eight.”  He smiled.  “You meet a lot of good guys that way.”

Mark cocked an index finger at him.  “Captain America wants to recruit you!”

“I suppose so.  I never really thought about it like that before.  But yeah, there’s a howlingly eclectic following, a lot more than you’d think.  A lot of Blacks and Asians, for instance, because of Gabe Jones and Jim Morita.  Captain Rogers’ unit was incredibly integrated for its time – don’t go by the War Bond films which were very Hollywood, and that biopic they did is a hopeless whitewash…”  He rambled on a little, before remembering that listening to an enthusiast could get old pretty fast.  “So you two are students?”  The pair looked achingly close to his own age.

The girl nodded.  “Poli Sci.  Mark’s a Philosophy Major.”

“So what do Political Scientists actually do?”  She coughed.  “No, I mean, obviously you do more than work out better ways to count votes, I just don’t understand the details of _how_.”

She ran a finger around the rim of her brandy snifter.  “I’m researching the impact of the Winter Soldier Investigation on legislative and military policy.”  She spoke quickly, as if she’d rattled out the phrase often.

“The Winter Soldier…?”

“‘These are the times that try men’s souls…’” Mark intoned, his almond eyes lighting up.

“Yes, I know my Tom Paine,” Phil said.  “‘The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot.’  I just don’t know what the ‘winter soldier’ is.”

“Anti-Vietnam War activists,” the woman said.  “They figured that if summer soldiers fight when it’s easy, then you need to be a winter soldier to fight when it’s hard, when you have to talk about your own side being the bad guy.”

Phil hesitated.  “My Lai was a rogue event.  Bad apples.”

“It wasn’t, is the point.”  She leaned forward, talking about her own passion.  “109 veterans spent three days testifying to the same stories, the same awful things happening all over Vietnam, and what happens?  It’s barely covered in the news.  One guy, _one_ , gets any kind of jail time for My Lai, and none of his superiors, when the U.S. busted a gut at Nuremberg establishing that following orders is not a defence for a war crime…  And it was only ten years ago.” She stopped suddenly.  “Well, you asked.”

“And you?” Phil asked her friend.

“Ethics of the draft.  The rights of the individual versus the collective good.  The role of the conscientious objector.”  Mark grinned.  “We’re actually based in Virginia – Culver is letting us do independent studies as undergrads, and we’re here for field work and interviews.”

Phil rubbed his chin.  “You two _can’t_ be popular around here.  Lieutenant Calley was quartered in Fort Benning on house arrest…”

“Winter soldiers,” she said.  “ _Especially_ when it’s hard.  Should I go to Berkeley and jeer from the sidelines?  Or come to Columbus, and talk to people who are going to have to make those choices the _next_ time America goes to war?”

“Well now, the strength of the army is that it _is_ a collective, a whole bunch of parts making up something bigger than the individuals.  If you start telling people they can pick and choose which orders they follow, you have chaos and a lot of dead soldiers.”  Phil was off into his own side of the debate, relishing the sort of abstract thinking that his drill sergeant kept giving him push ups and extra training runs for.  “Shouldn’t you be talking to the generals who make the orders?”

The woman’s eyes gleamed.  “You think generals leap fully formed from Zeus’ head?  Everybody has to start somewhere.”  And she was off, too.

“ROTC?” Mark asked, after a couple of hours of drinking.

Phil shook his head.  “I didn’t want to spend four years sitting on my ass reading books.  This way I can be a patriot now instead of waiting until I graduate.”

The blonde woman, who still hadn’t told him her name said: “Oh, you didn’t just use that word, I can’t believe you used that word.”

“You have a problem with patriots?”

“’Patriots’ justify the vicious and the venal with ‘but I did it for my country’.”  She flicked a peanut in the air and caught it open mouthed.   “I love my country so much it hurts, enough to want it to be a better place.  No, I don’t like ‘patriots’.”  She swayed on her stool.

“Woah, there,” Mark said.  “Time to go home, Taliaferro.  She’ll try to subvert you, you know,” he confided to Phil.

Phil nodded easily, feeling unthreatened.  “I’ll probably get another off-post pass in five weeks time.  If you two want, you could try subverting me again?”

Mark nodded.  “See what we can do.”

Miss Taliaferro smiled, looking sleepy.  “Can neither confirm nor deny…”

Phil couldn’t sleep that night.  It occurred to him, eventually, that he’d far rather be remembered as a Hugh Thompson, the guy who intervened, than a William Calley, the guy who made it happen.  He wondered what he would do if it ever became a choice between doing his duty to the army or to local civilians, which he would choose.  He wondered what Captain America would have thought about My Lai and Vietnam, and a chill hand wrapped around his heart.  The next day, when training began again, Coulson made a conscious choice to not ‘fall in’, to keep a part of himself separate from military discipline, that would keep on thinking objectively.  In a moment of humour, he labelled that part of himself “What Would Cap Do?” and prayed, sincerely, that he would never become the kind of soldier that Steve Rogers couldn’t respect. 

***

Just over a month later, and they were both there.  “Can I buy you a drink, ma’am?  Mark?”  He nodded civilly over the top of Miss Taliaferro’s head at her friend.

She tilted her head, a tongue pushed into her cheek, “I hear the brandy is very good here, Private Coulson.”

“I’ve heard that, too.”  He held up three fingers to the bartender again.  “I’m Phil.  Philip James to my mother.”

“Rose Taliaferro.”

“Mark Sarasota.  Like the place in Florida where the circus goes for the winter.”

“So you two are dating?”  He’d assumed so, the last time they’d met, but their body language didn’t seem quite right for it.

“Oh, we live together,” Mark said airily.

Rose considered him, her tongue in her cheek again, before answering the spirit of the question.  “Room mates.  Not dating.”

Phil grinned.

“Wow,” Rose said drily, “that was so totally not a poker face.”  But there was a smile in her eyes as she spoke, a hidden, secret one.

“Clearly, we should invite him over to play cards.”  Mark said.  “So spill, Private Philip J. Coulson.  What’s it like being in the army?  I’m taking notes for my thesis, by the way.  Obviously _no_ pressure, what you say will definitely not be held against you.  Much.”  He grinned.  “What’s it like?”

“I was surprised by how much time we have to spend looking after our uniforms, actually.  I mean, not just keeping them clean, but ironing them really carefully, stuff like that.”  He held out a handful of his shirt for inspection.  “My drill sergeant has got a real Thing about starching between the buttonholes so they don’t wrinkle.”

“You should meet my mother’s housekeeper,” Rose said.  “She takes it _really personally_ if you’re in her house anything less than clean and combed.”  Her brows wrinkled - pale eyebrows and paler skin.  “O…kay?  I’m not sure how that was funny?”

Phil suppressed not very successfully the smile on his face.  “You want to see me again.  You said I should meet your mother’s housekeeper.”

“Is he going to be like this _all_ the time?” she complained to the air.  “I need another drink.  Beer, this time.  You can’t afford to keep me in brandy.”

***

Coulson passed Infantry School with top marks and found himself in yet another training cycle, this time, despite his application, in Officer Candidate School.  His recruiting officer had promised that he would see the world – sometimes, he thought gloomily, he would be lucky to get out of Georgia.  Coming out a freshly made second lieutenant, he was rewarded with that most precious of commodities, a 48 hour pass.  Rose and Mark had finished their independent study and gone back to Culver, but he had better things to do than try visiting them anyway – there was a Cap convention being held in Atlanta, an easy bus ride away.

Walking into the hotel ballroom, Phil rolled his shoulders and felt the tension in his neck relax – he was back in the easy con camaraderie of his adolescence, familiar faces filling out the crowd and the vendors.  He wandered around the stalls for a while, checking out memorabilia and mentally tagging the pieces he wanted to get later – his budget could only stretch so far.  He was sorting through a set of vintage cards (most of them with damage, but a few good ones were mixed in with the dross) when he heard raised voices.  There was a stall across the aisle with a banner proudly proclaiming “Adopt-A-Superhero” and a poster showing Steve Rogers in his USO uniform with a huge grin on his face and the subtext “Captain America Wants To Recruit You.”  A guy Phil recognised vaguely was arguing with the stallholder: “…I’ve been a follower of the Cap _my whole life_ , and you’re marching in in pants that are too tight trying to take my hobby away…”

“Hey, hey,” the stallholder said.  “Steve Rogers was a good guy.  There’s a lot of room for a lot of love…”

“God _damm_ it,” the other guy said, and stalked out of the ballroom.

Phil eyed the stallholder curiously.  It was a traditional uniform more or less, but also, it seemed a little… off.  Most fans didn’t wear costumes, anyway, but this guy was wearing a shiny skin tight version like the spandex costumes in that Buck Rogers show.  And his build was unusual compared to the men Phil was used to being around – he was heavily muscled and strong looking, but he had a sculpted air about him, that made Phil think of bodybuilders rather than soldiers or farm labourers.  “What was that about?” he asked the man.

“Adopt-A-Superhero,” the stallholder said brightly.  “Here’s a pamphlet for you.  And the speech, of course.”  He pointed at a small tv that was hooked up to a video cassette player.  It was playing speeches from a debate on a repeated loop; two politicians, Phil guessed, one short and rumpled, the other taller and dressed very conservatively, both of them brangling back and forth in a well-practiced way.

“Speech?” he asked.

“Between Harvey Milk and Senator Briggs,” the stallholder told him.  “From the big Prop 6 debates in Orange County, two years ago.  You know?  This guy Briggs was trying to get Californian schoolteachers fired for being gay - it was a really big deal on the West Coast.  Just watch the tape.”

 _“And since we’re talking about family values and living a good American way of life, this is hardly something Captain America would approve of,”_ the respectable man (Senator Briggs?) sniffed. _“I mean, the gay lifestyle isn’t what the ‘greatest generation’ fought World War II for.”_

The little guy (Harvey Milk?) came back with: _“Hey, you just made my point for me.  Captain America stood for human decency and doing the right thing.  He led one of the few integrated units the US had in the War; he was friendly to Jews before it was popular; he was a good man.”_  The speaker smiled fiercely, and went on with a soft slurry voice: _“And he’s buff.  I declare this Adopt-A-Super Hero Week, and I’m claiming Captain America for my side.  No._ No _,”_ he said to Briggs trying to talk over him.  _“I’m proud to be an American, I’m proud to be gay, and I’m proud of my community.  Captain America has the virtues to which I and my friends aspire – don’t try to be perfect, try to be good.”_   Milk chuckled.  _“He’s on_ my _team.”_

 _“_ Really. _I think you’re out of line here-”_

 _“Not even a little bit,”_ said the speaker.  He looked kind.  Milk’s eyes were very bright as he looked straight at the camera: _“My name is Harvey Milk – and Captain America wants to recruit you!”_

“Huh,” said Phil.

 _It’s odd_ , he wrote to Rose and Mark later, _I feel like I’ve got a really precious toy that I’ve loved all my life and someone’s just soiled it.  Except Harvey Milk has got the right of it – I think Captain America_ would _have been fine with homosexuals in his unit, even if there aren’t any on record.  And suddenly, my squad mates are_ looking _at me, like they’re wondering if maybe I’m a gay and maybe that makes me a threat.  It’s just an odd feeling._

They mailed him back a record, a new disco album by the Village People.  Alongside the Indian, the Biker, and the Construction Worker, they’d acquired a new band member – a carrot shaped man in a skin tight red and blue jumpsuit.  It wasn’t the exact iconography of Captain America, but with the cowl and the silhouette the Superhero had a distinct family resemblance.  The note from Mark said: _The Adopt-A-Superhero thing has been around for a couple years now.  Mostly San Francisco and New York, but spreading.  I guess it only just now got as far as Georgia?_

***

One morning, very early, Coulson took himself out into the hills for a conditioning run.  He had two jerry cans of water for ballast, and every couple of miles he would take a mouthful.  About half way, when he had stopped for a drink in the scrub at the top of a hill he heard a low moaning.  Silently, he threaded his way through the bushes and the long grass seeking the source.  There were two men, naked, lying on a blanket, one atop the other, and when they looked up, their faces were red and sweaty.  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I thought someone was in trouble.” 

As he ran away down the hill, he tried to forget that he knew the two men.  Both were in his company. 

Two days later, the chickens came home to roost.  The two lieutenants, Jones and Pierson, cornered him while he was alone in the armoury.  He glanced up, nodded briefly, and went back to cleaning his rifle, while Jones sat down on the bench in front of him.  “So we need to talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“I think there is,” Jones said, crowding him a little.  “You saw something the other day.”

Coulson kept his eyes on his rifle.  There had been a directive earlier that year, clarifying the military’s position on homosexuality – if he reported them, they wouldn’t get an ‘undesirable’ discharge anymore, but they’d still be kicked out.  “It wasn’t any of my business.”

“So long as you know that.”  Coulson glanced up at Jones – his body language was belligerent, psyching himself up for a fight, verbal or otherwise. 

“He’s fine, right?  Coulson, you’re fine with what you saw, yeah?”  Pierson, standing behind him looked more hesitant, conciliatory.  “Do you want anything?”

Coulson looked at them both, startled.  He guessed they were trying to find out if he wanted to blackmail them and it made him intensely uncomfortable.  “I’m trying to forget what I saw.  No, there isn’t anything I want.  I mean -” he tried to clarify, feeling sick, “- I’m not trying to _get_ anything.”

“That’s good then,” Lieutenant Jones looked more satisfied, mollified; Pierson, relieved.  Coulson wondered how long it would last, how long Jones would be willing to live with a sword hanging over his head.  It was an awkwardness that none of his training cycles – or high school – had taught him how to deal with.

Another chicken came home to roost a month later, and try as he might when he turned over events in his head later, he never could think of a more graceful way he could have dealt with it.  He walked around a corner of the barracks and heard a muffled voice shouting “Officer!  There’s an officer, guys!”  A group of privates had been fighting in the dirt and were hurriedly getting themselves into a semblance of attention as he approached.  One in particular, a boy who looked barely old enough to be out of high school, was more bloodied in the rest. 

“Attention!” he yelled, furious.  “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing, sir,” one of the privates mumbled.  “We were training, sir.”

“Funny sort of training at this time of night,” Coulson said.  “What’s your opinion on that, Private…” he peered at the boy’s nametag in the dim light, “Cassidy?”

“Training, sir,” Cassidy mumbled through a gob of red spit.

Coulson sighed and put the whole damn pack of them on charges for the old standby: insufficient pride in one’s uniform.  As he was walking the kid, Cassidy, off to medical to get his ‘training injuries’ seen to, he heard a coughing sort of noise that sounded more than just a bit like “Queer.”

“Did you say something, Private Leighton?” he asked without looking.

“No, sir.  Had a frog in my throat, sir.”

“That’s good, then.  Then you won’t mind the extra hours on charges – it’ll give you some inside time to work out the frog.”

“Yessir.”

As he walked Cassidy through the muggy summer night, the private thanked him.  “I guess it’s true what they say about you, sir.”

“What?  What is it they say about me?”

“That you’re… uh… the lieutenant who likes Captain America, sir.”

“Is that so?”  He sighed.  Cassidy wasn’t short, not even for a soldier, but he had a willowy look to him, and a face that was just slightly effeminate.  It probably didn’t matter if that muffled accusation were true – his own experience of bullies in high school was that once you were marked, the pack would keep on coming back to you.  “There’s only one thing you need to know about Captain America, private: he didn’t like bullies.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

He brought the matter up at the next battalion level staff meeting.  “For better or worse,” he said, “Private Cassidy got himself a reputation in BT, and his squad mates are making the kid’s life miserable.  He’s been in medical three times this month.  It might be a good idea to move him, let the private start off with a clean slate.”

“Soldiers should be aggressive,” one of the captains commented.

“To the other side, sure,” Coulson said.  “And in any case, it costs how much to train a private soldier?  As things stand, he’ll wash out in a couple months, or get beaten too far to recover by his squad, and I think he’s too scared to report who’s attacking him.  It seems a big waste to me, for a soldier who could be salvaged by a simple transfer.”

Their battalion major OKed it, so long as the officer in charge of the unit would take him.  Silence settled across the room, and Coulson flicked his eyes over to Jones and Pierson to see if they would help the kid out, and quickly away when he realised they weren’t planning to.  At last he sighed, “Put him in my platoon; I’ll speak to my sergeant.”  He could… understand the two lieutenants’ decision to fly under the radar on this issue, he really could, but he thought he respected the Harvey Milk point of view more.  What would the Cap do, indeed.

Over the next few weeks, he realised that he, too, was marked.  His own platoon took to the newcomer with wariness, but he liked to think that they trusted him enough to make it work out.  With other soldiers in his company, it was different.  His days became filled with subtle snubs, never anything he could formally call someone out on, just inconveniences that built up one atop the other to ruin his day – supplied last by the quartermaster, his platoon given the worst assignments, soldiers from other units who were just a little bit slow in answering.  Coulson chose to brazen it out and concentrated on perfection, every facet of his platoon’s life was to be an exemplar of the Rule – the fittest soldiers, and the best marksmen, the neatest, and the wiliest.  He discussed with his sergeants the strengths and weaknesses of every soldier, and tuned their squads the way he might a a musical instrument, looking for the natural temper of each man so that each note could shine out bright and clear.  Cassidy, in particular, would not be allowed to fail.

He realised that he had not just trust but loyalty the night he walked in on another incipient fight.  Passing by the barracks close to lights out he heard voices raised in argument.  Normally he would have left it to a sergeant to deal with it, except it _was_ his sergeant, Velasquez, a Black New Englander with aquiline features and a sardonic sense of humour, in a rolling debate with a sergeant from Jones’ platoon: Gillie, a White Georgian redneck, and built like a mountain.

“Well, and who cares if the lieutenant’s that way inclined.  Doesn’t stop him being a good lieutenant.”

“Lieutenant for a pack of fairies.”

“Last I checked we whooped your platoon’s ass the last training exercise.  You want to call me Tinker Bell, go right ahead – I’m happy to beat you down as many times as you like, Gillie-boy.”

 “So,” Gillie asked, “do you take it up the ass or does the lieutenant?”

That was it.  Coulson rounded the corner.  “Attention, sergeant.”

Sergeant Velasquez looked around wildly.  “Sir, this isn’t-”

Coulson dropped the pitch of his voice a half tone to make his voice impossible to ignore.  “ _Attention_.”  He settled into a ruthlessly relaxed posture, and waited for the sergeants’ military training to kick in – an officer’s orders were an officer’s orders.  “Is there a problem, Sergeant Gillie?”

“Don’t like fairies,” the sergeant mumbled.  “Sir.”

“Fortunately, Gillie, _Peter Pan_ has not yet been screened in the rec hall.  But worry not, the welfare of enlisted men is important; as a favour to you, a word will be dropped in the ear of the officer who selects films for your viewing pleasure.”

“Don’t like sissies, neither.”

“Well, it’s an excellent thing there aren’t any here.”  Coulson stalked catlike around the two sergeants standing rigidly at attention.  “I’m glad to have put your mind at ease, Sergeant Gillie.”

“No, sir.”

“You still have a problem, Gillie?”

“Not allowed to hit officers, sir.”  Gillie had a good half foot of height on Coulson, and the body mass to back it up.  “Really want to.”

“I see.”  Coulson sighed, audibly and melodramatically.  “Another favour to you, poor bedevilled soul that you are.  As it happens, there _is_ one place you’re allowed to hit officers.  Sergeant Tinker Bell?”

Velasquez braced briefly, “Lieutenant?”

“Arrange a training bout for me and Sergeant Gillie, here.  Perhaps if he can air out his inappropriate fantasies he can start focusing on his work again.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“Dismissed,” and the pair vanished into the night.

Fort Benning was one of the largest bases in the country, but it turned out that when it mattered, gossip moved with the speed of a small town – that is, a little faster than light.  In the fourteen hours between his confrontation with Gillie and the ‘friendly training match’ they’d arranged, word had spread over the entire fort: the Captain America lieutenant was fighting a duel in his honour.  Velasquez had scored him the largest training room, the one with rows of benches for observers; this time filled with people from all over the base, including, Coulson realised dolefully, his major and the base commander.

“You are _insane_ ,” Pierson hissed, handing him a towel.  “Gillie’s the undefeated unarmed champion for the whole fort.  Helping me and Jones and that kid Cassidy isn’t worth this.”

“This isn’t about you,” Coulson told the lieutenant.  “It’s-” and as he spoke he realised the truth of it “- it’s that I’m not going to give up something I like because a politician I don’t know away over the other side of the country made a speech one time.  Not when it’s something worth liking.”

“You’re going to get beaten to a pulp for an anachronism?  I _know_ you’re not like us, not how it counts.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Coulson said.  “This is the right thing to do.”

Gillie was big, and he was fast, and he knew where to hit nerve clusters.  For the first half of the fight, it was all Coulson could do to keep on his feet and air in his lungs.  He kept on, one arm hanging loose from a nasty strike, kept moving, remembering his father telling him about Steve Rogers, the little guy who got beat up a lot, who kept on trying anyway.  And he waited, waited for Gillie to show his true self.  _Patience_ , Coulson’s father had used to say, in those long ago _taekwondo_ lessons.  _Patience, and let the other man give himself to you._

He spun away from a particularly bad right hook, ducked, and came up under Gillie’s guard.  There it was, that same overextended movement from a man big enough that he rarely had to defend himself.  Coulson jabbed hard, ducked away, and danced at the border of Gillie’s reach waiting for the next opening.  “I went to a Captain America convention last month,” he said conversationally, proving he still had air.  “I had a great time.  There were a lot more guys in tights than I’m used to, it was quite a sight.  I could get you a pass to the next one if you’re interested?”  Gillie snarled and lunged forward again, and Coulson seized the point of balance, hooked his leg and let the sergeant crash down like an exploded mountain on the ground.  “No?  Not really your thing?”  He danced away slightly, extended a hand to help Gillie up, then flipped him, all two hundred pounds into another crash onto the mat.  He waited, wondered if Gillie was ready to tap out yet…

He narrowly dodged a punch to the stomach and an eye gouge, and moved away again.  “’Cause you know, I like the Cap.  He always stood for what was right –”  Another overextended punch, and a roundhouse kick to Gillie’s head.  This was getting to be fun.  He knew, right then, that he’d won the fight in his head, ducked, jabbed, rolled and quietly, methodically, took Sergeant Gillie to pieces.

At last, he was crouching over Gillie, the redneck too exhausted to do more than pant.  “Now listen up,” Coulson snarled.  “I _like_ women.  I like talking to women, I like dancing with women, and I _really_ like making love to women.  And if there’s anyone in this battalion who feels the way about men that I do about the ladies, well, good luck to them.  Because life’s too short.  I trust them to have my back, the same way they can trust me to have theirs, and _if that’s a problem to you_ , buddy,” he twisted the collar of Gillie’s t-shirt against the man’s carotid, “well, maybe the Army’s not the place for you.” 

***

A couple of weeks later, Mark and Rose were back in town and he took them out for a drink to tell them about it.  The Jones and Pierson part of it, anyway; the hazing he and his platoon had been getting somehow felt too shameful to speak of; Gillie, even more so.  “This is strictly confidential,” he warned, “they could both get discharged if they get caught.”

“Hey, Lieutenants Alpha and Bravo, and Private Charlie – I think I can work out they’re pseudonyms,” Rose said.

“So why are you telling us?” Mark asked.

“I don’t… more of the feeling weird thing, I guess.  I’ve never known anyone who was gay before.”

“Sure you do,” Mark said.  “You know me.”

“Huh,” said Phil.

Silence fell over the three of them, more awkward by the second.  At last Phil broke it: “I think it’s my round,” and fled to the bar.  When he got back, cradling three beers in big hands, Rose had disappeared and Mark was scowling in the direction of the restroom.  “She abandoned you, huh?”

Mark was shredding a bread stick.  “Yep.”

Phil put the beers on table and gazed at his friends hands – short stubby fingers, inside-pale, a slight smudge on one knuckle from changing a typewriter ribbon; a world away from his own tanned, calloused fingers.  He was suddenly intensely aware of his own – and his friend’s – physicality in a way he’d never had to before.  “So… I’ve got a couple of questions.”

“Fire away.”  Mark’s voice was light and unsupported.

He tried to think of a diplomatic way to ask what he wanted to know.  Oh, what the hell: “Are you like Billy Crystal?”  In a moment, a solitary penny dropped, and he realised why he kept on being surprised by Cassidy’s height – the one gay character on tv that he could think of was short.  Harvey Milk hadn’t been a giant, either.  He flushed, feeling like a fool about an assumption he hadn’t even realised he’d made. 

“No.  No, I don’t like to wear dresses.”  Phil glanced up for a moment to see Mark rolling his eyes.  “Plus, that’s a completely different thing.  I know a bunch of guys who only ever want to sleep with women who like to wear something a bit nice.  It’s just a thing.  And wanting a sex change op is something else again.”

“OK,” Phil said, surprised.  “I didn’t know that.”

“What’s your second question?”

He turned his beer glass around and around in his hands.  “Ah… this is a bit awkward to ask.”

“No, you’re not my type.”  There was a clink of glass being put on the table.  “And I’m seeing someone anyway.” 

Phil nodded, feeling relieved that they’d shifted onto safer ground, and not wanting to say so.  “Wait, you mean that book editor you were telling me about?  David?”  At his next glance, he could see Mark smiling, a soft slightly goofy glow of happiness.  A sudden thought came to him.  “Oh _shit._   Captain America wants to recruit you.  You tried to tell me all this back when we met.” 

At his next glance, Mark was shrugging.  “More… asking the question?  The Captain America thing has only been around for a couple years, you know?”

“OK.”  Phil took a long deep swallow of beer.  “OK, so if we start off with the understanding that I’m a jerk and an unworldly hick, what do you need from me so that we get to stay friends?”

“Looking me in the eye would be a good start.”  Mark sounded wistful.

Phil looked up, still feeling guilty.  He reached out and ruffled Mark’s gingery-brown hair, the way he might have if he’d had a younger brother.  “Just so you know,” he said, trying to lighten the tone, “I’m not putting on a Cap costume for you or anyone.  There’s a time for tights in a man’s life, and that time has passed in mine.”

“Aw…” Mark screwed up his nose, accepting the change in conversation.  “But you have the ass for it.  Rose, doesn’t Phil have a nice ass?”

Returning from the ladies’ room, she slung an arm around both their shoulders.  “It is pretty splendid.  Are you two OK, or do I need to knock your heads together?”

“It went… better than expected,” Mark said.  “Next stop is my father.  Oh, _God_.” 

“You’ll do just fine,” Phil said, his voice husky.  It was the first time Rose had ever touched him, and the line of her forearm against his neck was an electrified bar of hypersensitised skin that was impossible to ignore.

“Oh, get a room,” Mark said.

“Hey, we’re dealing with your serious life event here,” he forced out.

“We’re totally there for you,” Rose added, her voice sounding strange.  When Phil looked at her he realised why – on her complexion, a blush had _nowhere_ to go.

“Just name your kids for me, yeah?”

***

Phil stood in the officer’s common room, looked at the crumpled napkin in his hand, took a deep breath and dialled the number on it.  The long distance call took a while to click through, and he heard a warm southern Virginia accent on the other end of the line.  “Hello?”

“Hi.  Rose.”

“This is she.”

“It’s Phil.  It turns out that I got an unexpected three day pass for this weekend.  Would you and Mark be up for a visit?  I’m good with sleeping on the couch – anything is better than the bunks here, you know?  A couch will be fine.”  _God_.  Why was this phone call so hard?

“Sure – we’ll trot you out in front of our peacenik pacifist friends and show off how broad minded we are.”  Rose made a small sound that he already associated with a smile and his chest felt a pang.  One of the lieutenants behind him hooted and he waved the fellow off – this was worse than phoning up a girl while sitting on the stairs at home with his mother and sister eavesdropping on him.

“Great,” he went on.  “So I was thinking.  Our Major’s wife went to Culver University and she told me about a really nice Italian restaurant.  How about I take you out for dinner Friday night?”  There, that was plausibly deniable enough – Rose could decide for herself if “you” meant “ _you_ you” or “you both.”

“I’ll be washing my hair Friday,” she replied.

Phil’s heart fell through the floor.  “Oh,” he said.  “Oh.  It was just a thought.”

Another sound, a soft breath he associated with a proto-chuckle.  “That was actually a joke.  Or not really – I’ve been stuck in night classes and meetings all week and I’m starting to think about taking a blow torch to my head, my hair’s so greasy.  But if you don’t mind getting pizza and having a quiet night in, you could keep me company?  Different from the mess at least, right?”

“That would be nice,” Phil stuttered.  “I’ll go buy a bus ticket.”

“Great, I’ll see you tomorrow.  Mark’s not back until Sunday, by the way – he’s gone up to New York.”

“OK,” Phil said.  Then, feeling like he’d just run five miles, he hung up the phone.  “Huh.”

Phil spent most of that first Friday evening wondering whether he was, or was not, actually on a date.  He’d thought that Rose liked him, but when she picked him up from the bus stop she’d been shy – offered her cheek for a brief peck and then bustled away, to chatter away about the pizza place they were collecting a pie from, fidgeted with the end of her braid, steered him through her tiny apartment with brief gestures as if afraid to touch him.

She set the table with silverware and napkins in individual rings, then stopped and quirked her mouth at him.  “I don’t mind if you eat with your fingers,” she said, “I really don’t.  It’s just habit.  Mark’s always teasing me.”

He raised his beer in a toast.  “Clean and combed?”

“Something like that.”  Then she bustled off into the shower and left Phil to prowl around the living room, checking out the book case and the knick knacks, and trying to work out whose stuff was whose – the battered guitar he figured was Mark’s, the high rag count notepaper seemed a Rose-like thing to have, the books were an eclectic mix: _Das Kapital_  jammed between _The Wealth of Nations_ and a book with Chinese characters and English sub title _Chuang-tzu_ ; the fiction section had a healthy slew of science fiction authors he recognised – Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein and LeGuin.  The blankets draped across the chairs; one crocheted and falling apart, the other hand quilted, both loved into softness, he wasn’t willing to guess.  He had a sudden burst of anti-nostalgia as he listened to the shower running – this was a life that he _might_ have had, if he’d chosen just a little differently.

After a while he dug into his bag and got his own homework out.  He was taking a break to look at the bookshelf again, fingering a set of well-loved leather bound spines, when he heard a deep contralto voice behind him:  “The Austen is Mark’s.  Scouts’ honour.”  He turned.  “I mean, he lets me borrow them, but they’re definitely his.”

“Real men read whatever the heck they like?”  She twinkled at him and his heart skipped a beat.  Rose had come out of the shower in a ratty Culver U t-shirt and a pair of boxers that looked stolen from her roommate, her hair laid in great wet swags over a towel on her shoulders to dry.  OK then, Phil thought, this was definitely _not_ a date, this was informality between friends.  He could work with that.  It was just his bad luck that he was getting an erection.  He fidgeted with his pen as a distraction. 

She walked over and peered at the papers he had out.  “What are you working on?”

“Training exercise,” he said.  “We’re going to be taking a county of Georgia and pretending it’s occupied territory.”

She sat down across from him and looked with interest at the maps he was working on as he worked through the scenario – the different factions in the ‘indigenous’ population, and the occupying forces, all from made up countries to keep politics out of it.  After a while of listening him talk about setting up garrisons and interactions with the ‘locals’ who were sometimes allies and sometimes insurgents and sometimes both, she suddenly said: “Paul Linebarger.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Paul Linebarger.  He was a soldier and a diplomat.  Back in Korea he staged an airdrop of leaflets telling Chinese soldiers that they could surrender by shouting the Chinese words for love, and duty, and humanity, and virtue.  They all kinda sound like “I surrender” in English.  He made it honourable for them to give up fighting.  Thousands of people got saved that way, I heard.”

“Huh,” Phil said.  “Paul Linebarger.  I’ll look him up.”

Rose stood and reached over his head to the bookcase and he swallowed hard at the sudden fragrance of skin and soap filling his lungs.  This was _not a_ date, he reminded himself.  She handed him a garish yellow book, a new edition of short stories, _The Instrumentality of Mankind,_ by a writer he recognised.  “Cordwainer Smith?” he asked.

She nodded.  “I met his wife once.  You know how it is when you’re fourteen?  You go on at strangers about your latest obsession?  She said her husband was always terrified to meet fans in case he got writer’s block.  So we talked about other stuff instead, and she told me the Korea story.  I wish I’d been able to meet him before he died, you know?”

Phil looked at his map again, sudden visions of a new management strategy running through his head, and started thumbing through the briefing manual thinking about opportunities.  Twenty minutes later, he looked up guiltily – he was being intolerably rude.

Rose was still sitting on the chair across from him, her arms wrapped around her knees, studying him.  “What are you thinking?” he asked at last.

The corner of her mouth quirked.  “I’m thinking Mark owes me twenty dollars.”

“OK,” he said, not really sure what to make of that. 

Rose reached for the handbag hooked across the bag of her chair and rummaged for her coin purse.  She flicked him a copper penny, one eyebrow raised.

“I… am thinking that I really want to smell your hair,” Phil said, defeated by honesty.  “I’m sorry, I know that’s boorish.”  _God_ , he silently screamed.  Why couldn’t I be James Bond?  Or the Saint?  Or Napoleon Solo?  _Fucking Captain America_ would have had something suave to say.  Actually… he did have to take that back – the Cap may have been universally recognised as The Decent Guy, but the romance scenes in his War Bond movies were notoriously bad… 

He realised that Rose, sitting across from him, had eyes that were getting rounder and rounder as different expressions passed over his face.  Eventually, she lost her reserve and cackled.  “Maybe not?” she said.  And then that sudden beautiful crimson blush spread across her face and down her neck as if someone had set her on fire.

Phil took a chance, reached out a tentative hand, and ran a finger through hair as soft and fine as spun gold.

***

Phil was not a virgin, the night he first made love to Rose.  He just felt that way.

It was an odd feeling, one that he would remember as the first time in his life his consciousness split in half, one part fully engaged in the moment, the other whispering objectively in his ear: "This is the best part, no, this is the best part now.  No, wait..."

At first it was utterly prosaic, a straightforward assessment that there were bonuses to having a room, and privacy, and the comfort of a bed instead of fumbling in the back of a car or a movie theatre.  Then he realised what was better - the right to stand naked before someone, and to see them in return; to have the luxury of skin on skin, to learn how someone's body was put together the slow and careful way, soft skin and smooth muscle and bones fine-made that knit the whole together.

He heard it in Rose's breathing first, then saw her face change and felt her fingers flex in his hair, and that strange objective part of his head showed him how to move and move just enough that he got to the new best part - feeling his lover fall to pieces beneath him.  And the other best part, seeing Rose's reserve utterly gone, nothing secret about her smile any more.  She held him for a long time after his own climax, trembling slightly, and he asked her: "Are you cold?"

She shook her head.  "Not even a little bit," and handed him, sensibly enough, a box of tissues to clean up with, and waited for him to lie down so that she could snug down with her head tucked into his shoulder as if made to fit there, one arm held comfortingly across his chest, her hair still just so slightly damp.

"I think," Phil said, still feeling shaky himself, "I think you may have ruined me for other girls."

He felt Rose laugh silently against his side.  "Well," she said, "I may just have to keep you on, then."  As he drifted off to sleep, warm, and cradling his lover, he knew at last what the true best part was.

Later, in the still darkness of midnight, he felt her stir.  “Tell me about your father,” she said.  “You said he died.”

Phil snuggled his lover in closer.  “He did.  About six years ago now.  He was a soldier.”

“Like you.”

“Not like me.  I don’t know.  Just not the same.  He was a volunteer in the Korean conflict – not the draft; went in a private, got promoted up to captain while he was there.  Met my Mom there, too.”

“Entertainer or nurse?”

“Nurse.  A good one, Dad told me.  Not just competent, one of the kind ones – well, I already knew that, she’s my Mom.  So they married and came home to the family farm.  Then Vietnam happened and he re-enlisted, went up to major.  I mean it about volunteering,” he said, “he thought it was important that the U.S. be there, to stop the dominos falling.  He liked the Vietnamese, though, called them little buggers in his letters, made friends with the locals.  He regretted the civilian casualties, I think; he just thought it was more important to get a military victory.  I don’t know.”

“How did he die?”

“Helicopter accident.”  Phil made a face in the dark, an old hurt he’d never spoken of before resurfacing.  “The letter we got was real vague, implied there were hostilities without actually saying so, so Mom threw a fit and made them give us a copy of the investigation report.  It turned out it wasn’t even a friendly fire incident, just a mechanical – someone didn’t do the maintenance properly and there my Dad is gone.  Just like that.  Just someone not doing their job right.”

Rose snugged in closer against his chest, hugged him tight.  “It’s OK, Phil.”

“What about your parents,” he asked, facing into the dark.  “You haven’t talked about them much.”  He could feel the skin of her back flicker like a horse’s twitch.  “You don’t have to say,” he added quickly.

“It’s alright,” she said.  “It’s OK.”  A breath and a breath and then a long sigh.  “There was a bad argument, just before I left for college.  Politics mostly, just with us political always seems to make it to the personal.  Except it had been building up for a good long while.  It’s funny, you know,” she tucked her head more firmly under his chin, “when I was a little girl, Dad was my be all and end all, my total world.  Disillusionment was pretty slow, but I guess – I guess it’s worse this way?  If we hadn’t been so close, it wouldn’t have hurt so much when we started disagreeing with each other.  It might have been easier to find a way to make up.”

“You’ve got time.  That’s something.”

She didn’t answer.  He couldn’t tell if she was asleep or just pretending to be.

***

Three months later, and Coulson was _really enjoying_ his operational debrief.  All the staff in his battalion were gathered in one of the large meeting rooms discussing what had happened in their months long game of make believe – at one point his major looked up from one of the reports frowning: “Lt Coulson.  Your reported casualty rates are underreported by a factor of ten.  It’s not like you to make an error like that.  Explain yourself, please.”

“There’s no error, sir.  We held a tea party.”  He kept up the bland façade of goodwill that he’d found worked so well when dealing with civilians.

Major Brougham pinched his nose.  “ _Really_ explain yourself.”

“Our platoon invested a lot of time in fostering respectful and friendly relationships with the locals we were garrisoning,” Coulson said.  “We picked up a lot of intel that way, from listening to civilian gossip.  Tinker Bell – that’s my Sergeant Velasquez - and Private Cassidy, in particular, turned out to have a real talent for information gathering.  We discovered that there was a guerrilla network in our patch who were planning to ‘blow up’ some strategic bridges and we were able to pick them up early with no harm done.”  He shrugged and looked nonchalant.  “After that, we were able to interview the ringleaders for more intel, made sure their families knew they were alright to foster more civilian goodwill, and the rest of our ‘war’ was sitting tight keeping an eye out for newcomers to the district and dealing with them as needed.  Pretty uneventful, really.” 

Across from him, three places down, the captain who’d been in charge of the insurgents’ side looked like he was sucking lemons.  _Oh yeah_ , Coulson thought, he’d been right about those bridges.  His platoon had been tagged as a pushover in the early planning, and their mild mannered refusal to fit in with the script had knocked the wind right out of the Adversaries’ sails.  It had taken them _weeks_ to catch up and adjust their tactics, and by then it had been far, far too late.  Coulson wasn’t going to gloat – sitting there as if amiably unaware of the tensions in the room was _way_ more fun.

A couple of days later, Major Brougham called him into his office, for a more personalised debrief of the operation.  It turned out that the major had had a question: “You said ‘interviewed’ the ringleaders.  Not interrogated.  Why the choice of word?”

Coulson hesitated, trying to put his thoughts into words.  “Mostly… mostly we ignored the interrogation manual, to be honest.  It didn’t seem very helpful.  Mostly we just talked to the suspects, and let them know we were listening to what they were thinking, and let them get their story out.  Everyone’s got a story, you know?  I think if we’d been messing around with punitive techniques or trying to intimidate them, they would have just clammed up.”  He spread his hands helplessly.  “It seemed to work?”

“I see,” Brougham frowned.  “Do me a favour, lieutenant – stop using the nickname Tinker Bell in staff meetings.”

Coulson grinned.  “Yes, sir.  Am I dismissed now, sir?”

“Not quite yet.”  Major Brougham pulled an envelope out of his desk and flipped at Coulson.  “Turns out, Captain America wants you – for Ranger School.  Maybe they want to toughen you up.”

“Thank you, sir,” Coulson said, ripping open the envelope and tracing out the acceptance letter for a new training programme.  “I won’t let you down.”

“I expect not,” Brougham drawled.  He eyed his lieutenant for a long time.  “I’ll tell you something, son, something important.  Your management tricks are just dandy.  Stopping brush-fires before they start is the best way, I really believe that, and when you leave the army you’ll do _well_ in administration, which is my most sincere compliment, because I’ve had to deal with waytoo many self-important fuckups in the civil service and defence contractors who overestimate their intelligence and severely underestimate mine.  But those tricks, they won't work all the time.  And when your house is on fire, you're walking on coals, the roof is falling in, and your people are dying - what are you going to do?”

The corners of Coulson’s mouth dragged down and he spoke around a sudden bitter lump in his belly.  “How am I ever going to know if all I do is cool my heels in Fort Benning?  Sir.” 

Brougham tapped the orders to report to training meaningfully.  “Get yourself to Ranger School.  Run around in the swamp and tire yourself out and get your head straight.  After that, I’ll see what I can do.  Now get the fuck out of my office.”  As Coulson hightailed it, the major shook his head sadly.  “Sergeant Tinker Bell…  Just _talked_ …  Bah!”

***

“Holy Mother of God,” Rose said as she opened the door.  “Where did they send you?  A concentration camp?”

“Ranger School,” Phil limped inside.  Rose had been cooking, her apartment rich with the smell of rosemary and garlic and meat that hadn’t been beaten to a pulp and reconstituted.  As if a zombie, Phil walked into the tiny kitchen and stood there breathing the blissful vapours of Real Food.

“Didn’t they feed you while you were away?”

“Twice a day.  MREs.  Three hours apart.  Cold reconstituted MREs.  I will _never_ ,” he said dourly, “eat curry again.”

Rose opened the oven, pulled out a lamb roast in a cloud of steam, plated it with quick deft movements.  “Would you like to carve?”  Her mouth quirked.  “Or have you turned into a rip it up with your hands kind of guy?”

For the next half hour, all he could think about was food.  At last he looked up – Rose was sitting watching him, her long blonde hair smooth along her shoulders, one eyebrow slightly raised.

“I’m sorry, honey,” he said in a joking voice, “but if you want to get laid tonight, you’re going to have to do all the work…”

“In your dreams, hero,” she said, and dragged him into the bedroom.  “Let’s see what the goons left me.”  And she undressed him.  Slowly, like a child who was saving the gift wrap on her Christmas present, carefully hanging his fatigue jacket on a chair, brushing the new minted black and yellow Rangers Tab on the left shoulder with her fingers, easing his pants down over his now jutting hip bones.  She ran her hands flat over his sides and legs, exploring his new scars –

“That was a snake bite,” he said.

“That was a big snake…”

“Poison ivy.”

“O….kay.”  She pushed him down to lie flat on her bed, dripped oil smelling of rosemary and lavender on his back.  “This one?” fingering a raw red welt on his shoulder.

“Particularly vicious tree branch.  It was murderous, I tell you.  Psychotic and deranged, I say.”

“Right then.” Her fingers dug into the muscles in his shoulders, along his spine, and he felt himself easing into sleep.  He was in a warm, soft space for the first time in two months…

“Rose?”

“Phil?”

“I think something may have come up…”  She rolled him over and straddled his hips, still dressed in shorts and t-shirt, her hair pooling over his chest. 

She smiled, her brown eyes warm.  “I’m glad you’re back.”

***

The next time Phil visited, there were bad omens from the start.  The bus up from Georgia had been plagued with breakdowns, and he’d missed his transfer to Culver City, with only the bare hope that Rose or Mark had checked their answer machine and hadn’t driven out to meet the wrong bus.  When he clambered out, stiff from all those hours sitting still, he sighed.  He’d _said_ not to pick him up – it was closing midnight – but as the bus had rumbled on lonely roads and past small towns with only the truck stop diners lit up, he’d found himself hoping that someone would be there to meet him.

He hoisted his duffel onto his shoulder and trudged through the carpark to see if any of the local bus services were still running.  He heard low voices, and looked up, surprised to see a small figure in a sheepskin coat that he recognised.  Rose was standing under a lamp post halfway between her car and the intercity bus stop, talking to a burly guy who hulked over her.  It was an incredibly lonely scene, as if the lamp light were the only thing fixing his girlfriend and the stranger to the earth, as if they might softly and suddenly vanish away if ever they left its protective circle.

Rose was talking, low and focused: “What’s your name?  Hey, Pete, I’m Rose.  Rose from down south a way, I moved here for college.  How about you?  You a local or like me?” and nodding and agreeing with the answers, and it took Phil a while, too long, to realise that behind her calm and reasonable voice was a problem.  She yawned ostentatiously in Pete’s (a big guy in a shabby jacket) face and added: “Sorry, it’s been a long day.  My roommate was supposed to do this pickup but he got called into work.  Oh look, Phil’s here.  Phil, meet Pete – Pete, this is my boyfriend come to visit.  Sorry, I can’t chat any longer.”  The big guy turned, in the flat street light his eyes a harsh glitter and he pocketed something shiny.  For the second time in his life, Phil’s attention split, one half realising that Rose was a pro at the de-escalation tricks that he and Velasquez had worked out the hard way on their training exercise; the other, straight territoriality, raw and brutal, the desire to go for this guy’s throat for threatening someone he cared about.  Rose added: “Catch you around, Pete,” and started walking away, just a little faster than normal, and perforce, Phil followed her into the car where she unlocked it, got inside, gripped the steering wheel with rigid white hands, and breathed deeply twice.  “So,” she said, “I get the feeling you had a rotten trip.”

“I-”

“I hate it when the bus runs late, I always feel trapped in that little seat wanting to claw my way out, you know?” and that was the only thing she had to say for the car ride home.

When they got to Rose’s apartment, she was busy, precise, avoidant.  He watched her bustling around her home, tchhing at the spoiled dinner in the oven, grabbing a towel and heading into the shower with a firmly locked door, come out enveloped in shapeless ‘Peter Pan’ pyjamas patting her hair dry.  She raised an eyebrow at his kitbag sitting neatly in the hall and he explained: “I wanted to check whether I was sleeping with you or on the couch tonight.”  She shot him a filthy look and swept past him into her room. 

After Rose had turned out the light and slid under the covers she called out to him: “In _here_ , Phil,” and he stripped down to his shorts and skinned into bed with her.  In the dark, he could speak.  “I’m sorry the bus was late,” he said.  “I think, I think you shouldn’t have waited.  I could have walked here.”

She sighed, her voice rich with exasperation.  “Did I say I was mad about the bus?  Everything is _fine_ , Phil.  Everyone walked away.”

He lay there for hours, staring at the ceiling, Rose curled up beside him, asleep or pretending to be, her braid, too sodden to dry properly, a congealed wet patch on the sheet between them, and wondered what he was supposed to have done differently.  He must have dozed off at some point, because he woke to the sound of weeping and harsh jaggedy breathing.  He rolled over and curled around his girlfriend and whispered anything he could think of: “hey there, my sweet, my girl, my darling, you had a fright but everything is fine, it’s alright now” until her breathing eased back into sleep and he was left feeling, oddly, the most intensely sexual being of his life.

In the morning, Mark shrugged when he told him about it.  “Rose is a pretty good talker,” he said.  “She got me out of a beating one time.”

“Yeah, but she shouldn’t have _had_ too.  Picking someone up from the bus stop shouldn’t be that dangerous.”

“Not everyone’s a Ranger, Phil.  Or Captain America.”

“Yeah, but the Cap wasn’t always this big athletic guy.  That’s the _point_ of him.  He started off little.”  And was probably beaten up a lot, he realised soberly, a part of the reality that hadn’t made it into the legend.  His lips thinned, and he concentrated on refilling the coffee pot, and mixing pancake batter.  When Rose emerged, sleepy-eyed, hours later than usual, he mutely presented her with a cooked breakfast – the only apology he could think of.  Then he made the two of them get into sweats and hauled them out to the local park.

“I can’t bodyguard you two, but I _can_ teach you how to throw a punch.”

***

Phil had a longer leave than usual that visit, and he made the most of it – took a few days to go up to Richmond to visit his sister and surprise his Mom who’d been lured there on false pretences; another couple of days tagging along with Rose and Mark to the University and being passed around like a trophy to their friends to audit different classes.  He spent a lot of time walking around Culver City as well, kicking his feet into dirty snow drifts, checking out the town’s modest tourist attractions.  For all of it, he felt like a fraud – his jeans and sweater and checked shirts could pass as the more conservative sort of student, with only his short hair and upright posture to betray him, but yet he felt like an alien as he walked through the city.  His thoughts were too heavy upon him.

At last, when they were out for a run, Mark braced him with it.  “So spill.  What’s eating you up, dude?  Every time you think no one’s watching you get gloomy as hell.  Seriously,” his friend added, “if you can’t tell your gay best friend you can’t tell _anyone_.  It’s practically what we were _invented_ for.”

“Hah!” Phil countered.  “Keep talking like that, and I’ll personally drive you to your parents’ house and hold your hand while you come out.”

“Fighting words, Coulson, _fighting words_.”  Mark turned and jogged backwards on the athletic track.  “But seriously, what’s the matter?  Are you still bugged about Rose?  Because I think she’s fine.”

“It’s not that.”  Phil sighed.  He’d come out here to have a good think, and it hadn’t helped even a little.  He came out with it.  “Last week I got called into my CO’s office for a chat.  An unofficial entirely non-prejudicial informal _chat_.”

“OK…”

“I can’t get promoted.  I’ve got the points and the personnel evaluations, but I won’t be.  No overseas service, either.”  His mouth twisted.  “They decided I’m a security risk.”

“Holy fuck,” Mark said.  “Because you’re friends with me?  I thought they’d given up on that whole homosexuals can be blackmailed bullshit…”

“Not you,” Phil said bitterly.  “Probably not helping, but my major straight out said no.  My girlfriend is on someone’s watch list somewhere is the problem.  Suspected Communist sympathies, suspected dangerous radical.  Which I’m not supposed to tell either of you, but _fuck_ them.”

“Wow.”  Mark shoved his hands deep into his tracksuit pockets as they walked.  “You know, if Rose has been going off and burning flags and blowing up ROTC buildings, she clean forgot to mention it.”

“Yeah,” Phil tried to hide his relief, and reverted back to the brave little speech he’d been working on on his bus trip.  Spoken out in the world, it sounded pathetic.  “Except it almost doesn’t matter – once you get on someone’s watchlist, it takes a miracle to get off.  I don’t even know how you’d _start_ … not when the spooks aren’t even willing to say that there _is_ a list.  And it’s… I can be friendly with you guys who are socialists, and feel edgy about it, and know that we don’t need to always agree, but then I get to the C word and, and, my father _fought_ the Communists.  He died because he was fighting Commies.  And that’s a really hard gut feeling to get past.  And then I go: well, what would the Cap do, and to Steve Rogers, China and Russia were _allies_ and now they’re _not_ and it’s… it’s _still_ a hard gut feeling to get past.”

His friend’s breath puffed out white in the icy air.  “OK.  So is this visit ‘hey it’s been nice knowing you’ or ‘hey, would you help me make an appointment with the Dean of Admissions’?”

“I don’t _know_.  The problem is – I love you guys, both of you,” and he was proud to say that he could say that without fear, “but I love being in the army, too.  I mean that’s my _life._   I’ve seen you two at the University and at your debates – that’s where you _live_ , it’s your passion, where you thrive, what you’re good at, everything about you fits into academia.  For me, that’s the army, it’s running my team, and combat training, and PT, and knowing how to be ready for danger and having the perfect ordered life.  It’s where _I_ live.  And I’m terrified,” Phil swallowed, “I am so damn terrified that if I give up one thing I love for another, I’ll lose them both.  That if the sacrifice is too big, it will all go up in ashes.  And _that’s_ why I can’t talk about it.”  He started running again, desperate for space from his own dreadful words, sprinted until he’d lapped his friend twice and had to slow down out of breath and jog again.

“For what it’s worth,” Mark said when he’d caught up, “if you pick the army, I’ll really miss you.”  Behind the beard, Mark’s face was contorted with grief.  Oh hell, Phil thought, and stopped cold.

“Are you up for a totally manly and platonic hug?”  With Mark’s arms wrapped around his rib cage, Phil realised that this was what having a brother was supposed to be like.

When they got back to the apartment, Phil sat down with Rose and straight out asked her.  “Are you a Communist?”

She rolled her eyes.  “Clean up is an exercise best left to the student.  You tell me, Philip James Coulson.”

So he thought about it, weighed up the evidence he’d seen, the questions he’d been asked and had asked in return.  At last he had to say no.  “You like some of their ideas, like from Marx and Engels, but you hate the way they’ve happened in the world.  And you said that you thought soldiers should have been taught about Communism back during Vietnam – so they’d have something to say back if they got taken prisoner and the Viet Cong tried to indoctrinate them.  So no, you’re not a Communist.  Of course, you hate capitalism even more… but you don’t do black and white taking sides.  You’re all about people should be more decent to each other…”

She spread her hands wide.  “No system is perfect…  Why did this suddenly come up?”

Phil’s courage almost failed.  But he took her hands and explained about the deal he’s been offered by the army, and worse, how conflicted he was about it.

His girlfriend was silent for a very long time tracing out the callouses on his fingers.  At last she said: “I’ll have to go with Mark – I’ll miss you if you pick those other guys,” and he knew that that was the only advice he was going to get.

***

When Coulson got back to Fort Benning, his platoon was in an uproar.  Velasquez saw him walking through the barracks, his arms full of gear, and snapped his heels together, one hand forming a sloppy salute as his load of equipment slid precariously to the floor.  “Guten tag, Herr Leutnant.”

“What’s going on?” Coulson asked.

“Hah!” Lieutenant Pierson said sourly as he passed.  “Some people get all the luck – your platoon’s being transferred to Germany.  Right on the fucking Berlin Wall.”

Coulson’s heart sank through the floor: Major Brougham hadn’t even waited for an official ‘unofficial’ answer before taking his team away from him.  He double timed his way to his CO’s office, urgent for an explanation and hovered by Brougham’s secretary still in civvies, waiting for the earliest appointment.

The Major was gruff and unimpressed with Coulson’s urgency.  “Ah, here you are.  This is for you, Captain Coulson.  Congratulations.”

Coulson opened the manila envelope and read through the contents – a promotion, and better, a transfer to a base in Germany and a battalion that was garrisoning the border between East and West Germany.  This was the closest thing to a shooting war he could expect to see, the way the world was this year, with the combat pay to go with it.  He was taking his platoon, he’d be serving under – his heart fluttered – the son of one of the Howling Commandoes.  This was _everything_ he’d ever wanted.  He’d spent his trip home tortured and conflicted about which way to jump, tried writing lists of pros and cons, flipping coins to see what he choice he secretly wanted, and always come up undecided.  Now, finally confronted with a hard choice, the words burst out of him, too loud: “I’m not giving up my friends for you!”

Brougham rolled his eyes.  “Relax, Coulson.  God Himself took an interest in your file.  Your security clearance came through yesterday, your personal contacts were deemed… satisfactory.”  His _former_ major reached over the desk and shook his hand.  “Best get yourself packing, Captain.  Make me look good to Colonel Duggan, yes?”

***

The night before he shipped out was a good night.  Rose and Mark had taken him out to an expensive dinner that none of them could afford, and they’d spent the evening taking guesses at what the French names for the dishes concealed and giggling at the disapproving looks from the other guests.  After, Rose had taken him back to a hotel room and they’d made love, the slow, gentle way that made him feel closer to her than the breath of God.  She’d fallen asleep against him, her head nestled in the curve of his shoulder as if made to fit, his fingers tracing the curve of her spine, his nostrils filled with the subtle smell of their skins intertwining, some strange alchemy.  He lay there in the dark, gazing at the dim ceiling, thinking that there was one perfect place and time to be, and this was it.  And the movement of time and the spinning of the world on its axis, and the knowledge that a passing moment was gone for ever.

“What are you thinking about?” Rose said sleepily.

“I think we should break up.”

“Excuse me?”  She half sat up, blinking herself awake.

“I want to break up.”  Phil turned on his side to look at her.  “I’m going to be away for a year.  And anything could happen – I could get injured or killed.  I wouldn’t want you to worry about me.”  She slid out from under the covers and stared at him.  Silently, her lips pressed into a thin line, she began to get dressed.  He sat up.  “I’m trying to be the good guy here,” he protested.  “They say you’re always different, after.”

“ _You’re_ being the good guy?”

He stood before her, naked, vulnerable.  “You could meet someone while I’m away.  Someone kind.  You should be able to date him without feeling guilty.  Or holding on for a year and finding that you get a stranger back out the other side.  They say you’re always different.”

“And you’re so terrified of getting a Dear John letter, you’re making sure there won’t ever be one.”  Rose shook her head at him.  “Oh my darling, you need to work on your poker face.”

“ _Rose_.”

She made a sound, a small sigh in the back of her throat.  “Keep yourself safe, Phil.”  She gathered her things and left without another word.

 

 

*********************************************

Chapter Notes:

“That could keep its head together…”: Cribbing some lines from the first verse of Rudyard Kipling’s _If_.  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772>

I’m getting most of my information about US military training procedures off Wikipedia, apologies for any errors.  OCS is Officer Candidate School.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Basic_Training> (and others).  I’m also putting in some anecdotes I’ve heard from friends and acquaintances who’ve served in the military.

“is the spirit of the elevator that really witty thing you make up while listening to _The Girl From Ipanema_?”: _The Girl From Ipanema_ was a bossa nova hit from the 1960s.  It used to get played in elevators a lot.  Thusly!  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inb1NxdoKNc> (from about 1:22).

“A lot of Blacks”: So I ended up asking myself the question – what word would a polite young man use for a person of African descent in 1980?  It turned out to be a term with a lot of shift in it: ‘Coloured’ was the preferred term until the 1920s (eg National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’) when it switched to ‘Negro’, which in turn started its decline in the late 60s and was completely uncouth by the mid 80s and had been replaced by ‘Black’.  ‘African-American’ started to come in in the late 80s, particularly after a 1988 speech by Reverend Jesse Jackson, but without a strong preference between that and ‘Black’ defined yet.  And ‘Coloured’ got a makeover and came back again as the more inclusive ‘Person of Colour’ in the late 1970s/early 80s when this story is set, but by activists, which Phil is not, at least at this point.  The term was much more widely used by the late 80s.  <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/01/when_did_the_word_negro_become_taboo.html>   <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color>, [http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=xoZ0POyF2YkC&pg=PA86&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false](http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=xoZ0POyF2YkC&pg=PA86&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false).

“These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman”: the opening lines of Thomas Paine’s _The American Crisis_.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Crisis>.

My Lai Massacre and the Winter Soldier Investigation: My Lai was one of the worst atrocities of the Vietnam War – basically troops ordered to kill anything that moved in a village populated by women and children, and making a day of it.  Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot who intervened to save some civilians, was told by a lieutenant involved in the massacre that the only way to get some refugees out of a bunker was “with a hand grenade”.  Lieutenant Calley was the only soldier who saw jail time for his role in what happened, and his sentence was massively shortened.  The Winter Soldier Investigation was a hearing held over three days in Detroit by anti-war activists in which Vietnam veterans came to the hearings to talk about the war crimes they had seen or committed.  The goal of the investigation wasn’t to pin guilt on individuals but to address systematic policies in the military that encouraged human rights abuses such as at My Lai.  <http://www.salon.com/2014/05/02/the_burden_of_atrocity_how_vietnam_was_exposed_as_a_dirty_war/>, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Soldier_Investigation>, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre>.

“My drill sergeant has got a real Thing about starching between the buttonholes so they don’t wrinkle.” – Straight from the horse’s mouth: <http://www.cracked.com/article_19016_5-myths-about-military-you-believe-thanks-to-movies.html>

“a spandex skin tight version like the costumes in that Buck Rogers tv show”: _Buck Rogers in the 25 th Century_ (1979-81).  There were a lot of close fitting outfits, for both men and women – I couldn’t find the reference but apparently up until Buck Rogers, spandex was mostly used in women’s corsetry.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Rogers_in_the_25th_Century_(TV_series)>, <http://my-retrospace.blogspot.co.nz/2010/07/foxy-ladies-13-women-of-buck-rogers.html>.

Harvey Milk: a politician and gay rights campaigner from the 70s: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk>.  Among other things, he was famous for encouraging closeted gays to come out: “On this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight.  For themselves, for their freedom, for their country ... We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets...  We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions.  We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it.  And I want you to talk about it.  You must come out.  Come out to your parents, your relatives.”  The big gay rights issue of this period wasn’t about being able to marry, it was the legal right to not be fired or kicked out of your house; and it was common for people who identified as homosexual and had mainstream jobs to keep _very_ quiet about it – to be openly gay right now was very much about being in the counterculture.  In general, I’m trying to write Phil’s attitudes to gay rights in this chapter as being a creature of his time – there were a lot of social changes going on in the 70s and 80s, coming out of a background of normalised homophobia.  So Phil ethically believes that supporting gay rights is a good thing, but at an emotional level the subject makes him uncomfortable, which is something he has to work through.

“My name is Harvey Milk – and Captain America wants to recruit you!” – Harvey Milk often used the tagline “My name is Harvey Milk, and I want to recruit you!”

“an exemplar of the Rule” – an allusion to the monastic Rules – all the prescriptions that go into living a contemplative life.

“Are you like Billy Crystal?”: Billy Crystal played the character Jodie Dallas in the risqué parody of soap operas _Soap_ (1977-81).  Jodie was a grab bag of a lot of non-cis, non-straight things – gay, transvestite, and considering a sex change operation.  On the other hand, he was one of the first regular gay characters on American television, and presented as a normal person in a sympathetic light.  So somewhat problematic, but also pioneering.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodie_Dallas#Controversy>

“Training exercise,” he said.  “We’re going to be taking a county of Georgia and pretending it’s occupied territory.” – This is a childhood memory for me – my mother’s partner used to bring home planning documents for exactly this kind of wargame.

“Paul Linebarger” – A super cool guy.  <http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/psychological-warfare.htm>

“stop the dominos falling” – The Domino Theory, a principle prominent in US foreign policy during the Cold War that if one state in a region (especially in South East Asia) becomes communist, the others will follow in a domino effect.  A big driver behind the Vietnam War.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory>

“Holy Mother of God,” Rose said as she opened the door.  “Where did they send you?  A concentration camp?” – So I looked up the US Army Ranger School while I was researching this – those guys are _badass_.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_School>  It’s apparently normal to lose 20-30 pounds and be in the worst shape of one’s life on completing the course.

“as if they might softly and suddenly vanish away” – cribbed from _The Hunting of the Snark_ by Lewis Carroll.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta reader, Thimblerig, who's been getting pieces of this story in out of context scraps and patches for _way_ too long, and kept on cheering regardless.
> 
> The update schedule will be irregular - this is intended as a four parter but I'm a really slow writer. (But I think I needed to get some validation from getting the first chapter published. ;-) ) Thank you for reading!


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